Flugten

1942. Denmark. Directed by Albert Mertz, Jørgen Roos. This remarkable short illustrates the influence of Un Chien andalou and L'Age d'or (1930) beyond Western Europe. Employing rapid editing and fragmentary images, Mertz and Roos provide clues about the events of an evening that progressed from passion to murder. Death and decay, memorably symbolized by ants crawling on a hand in Un Chien andalou, are similarly illustrated in Flugten. Print courtesy The Danish Film Institute. 7 min.

The Night of the Hunter

1955. USA. Directed by Charles Laughton. Screenplay by James Agee, based on the novel by Davis Grubb. With Robert Mitchum. Laughton's only directorial effort is a disturbing and genuinely surreal tale of a fake religious zealot who arrives in a small town after learning that a death row prisoner has hidden $10,000 nearby. Powell marries the prisoner's widow, raising the suspicions of her two children, who know where the money is buried. Stanley Cortez's striking black-and-white cinematography is reminiscent of the nightmare scene Dalí created for Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1944)—a sequence Hitchcock described as "very solid and very sharp with very long perspectives and black shadows...a very hard image." 92 min.

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